Word: cubanism
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...restrictions - widely viewed as a thank-you to the hardline exile bloc that helped Bush win Florida in 2000 - allow Cuban-Americans to visit the island for only 14 days every three years and limit remittances to $1,200 per year. "It's almost as if you have to decide ahead of time when a relative is going to die," says Miami immigration attorney Magda Montiel Davis, a Cuban-American moderate who says she is now voting for Obama after reading his Herald article. Bush and hard-line leaders insist the policy helps keep U.S. dollars out of Castro...
...same time, Obama's stance could help him garner a larger share of the state's non-Cuban Democrats (especially non-Cuban Latinos), who were repulsed by hard-line exile politics during the Elian Gonzalez fiasco. And as for the general election, even many hard-line voters have changed their mind about Bush's travel and remittance policy...
...response to Obama's statement, Hillary Clinton continued her recent attacks on his perceived foreign policy naivete, insisting that "until it is clear what type of policies might come with a new [Cuban] government, we cannot talk about changes in the U.S. policies toward Cuba." But by playing that safe card in Florida, Clinton may have allowed herself to be "outmaneuvered by Obama on this one," says one Cuban-American leader who asked not to be identified, pointing to a recent Florida International University poll showing that more than 55% of Cuban-Americans in Miami favor unrestricted travel to Cuba...
...That survey, say academics like Rafael Lima, a University of Miami communications professor and the son of an exile once imprisoned by Castro, reflects the growing number of younger, more moderate Cuban-American voters in South Florida - and the waning clout of the older, more conservative generation. Unlike their elders, the younger generation believes that the 45-year-old economic embargo against Cuba has utterly failed to dislodge its communist leader. As a result, Obama could now galvanize those moderates, who Lima says "have been waiting for a viable presidential candidate to wave their banner for once...
...that Miami's Cuban-American community has an overwhelming number of registered Democrats to woo in the first place. The exiles have traditionally voted Republican ever since they abandoned President John F. Kennedy because of his botched direction of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. But Miami Democrats like Elena Freyre, a Cuban-American art gallery owner in Little Havana, say they've been trying to tell Democratic candidates to stop parroting the hard-line position. "Obama's people were the first who ever said to me on the phone, ?Wait, let me get a pen and write that...